Isaac Laquedem

Post-election wrap-up: What the voters muttered

Having read (and in some cases shamelessly stolen from) the post-election analysis of the other pundits in our corner of the blogosphere, I'm ready with my own comments on Tuesday's results.

Portland voters decided that incumbency -- more properly, identification with the wing of the crypto-Democratic party that has been in charge of Portland since 1973 -- is a disadvantage. Sam Adams finished well behind Nicholas Fish. Adams is a City Hall insider and protege of Mayor Katz; Fish is a moderate Democrat who follows at least four generations of Republicans and is a newcomer to Oregon. Jim Francesconi finished well behind Tom Potter. Francesconi is a sitting councilor; Potter was last in public life 10 years ago as Portland's police chief. (And Francesconi finished second despite outspending Potter 14 to 1.) Randy Leonard alone avoided a runoff, but many of his opponents are part of the unelected political establishment; Leonard established himself as the only outsider on the council.

Over at Multnomah County, Maria Rojo de Steffey and Lisa Naito turned in unimpressive numbers against weak opposition, with Naito forced into a runoff in November. (I'm taking this on trust from other reports; as I live half a mile outside Multnomah County, the Oregonian's bizarre system of regional editions means that my edition of the Oregonian doesn't report the Multnomah County Commission races. It does, however, tell me that Leslie Lewis defeated Mike Sullivan for Yamhill County Commission seat no. 2, 25 miles away from Laquedem McManor.)

Anti-incumbent votes kept Supreme Court Justices Rives Kistler (61%) and William Riggs (65%) below where they should have been, considering that their opponents were political and legal unknowns who ran very modest campaigns.

The anti-incumbent slant took a toll in the suburbs. Clackamas County voters evicted Sheriff Pat Detloff, and Republicans ousted incumbent Bill Yount (who had been appointed midterm) from House District 35.

Republicans generally preferred Church Street to Main Street, and Main Street to Wall Street. They chose Betsy Close (Church Street) over Fred Granum (solidly Wall Street) to run against Secretary of State Bill Bradbury. They chose Goli Ameri (Main Street) over Tim Phillips (Wall Street) in the 1st District. In the 5th District, they chose Jim Zupancic (Wall Street, but running as an anti-tax Main Street) over state legislator Jackie Winters (no known Street).

Early predictions for the fall: Bill Bradbury will easily defeat Betsy Close for Secretary of State. David Wu will defeat Goli Ameri in a squeaker. Darlene Hooley will defeat Jim Zupancic in the 5th District by about 5 points. Lisa Naito will be reelected to the Multnomah County Commission by a wide margin. Nick Fish will defeat Sam Adams by 12 points.

And the big one, Potter and Francesconi? Flip a coin, a coin that no longer has a million dollars on one side of it. But I will predict that Tom Potter's mailbox is about to burst with unsolicited $100 checks from people whose names have shown up on Francesconi's contribution list.

Underkill

My friends at the Mausoleum Club are undoubtedly thinking that they've thrown away a million dollars. Even if we couldn't avoid a runoff (it was a 23-candidate race, after all), our candidate should have finished first. But to finish second to someone who spent only $63,000 -- less than some of us spend on city development permit fees! -- that's embarrassing.

It could have been worse: we could have finished behind the other Jim (Jim Spagg), who died mid-campaign.

The best public schools fare the worst

Stately Laquedem McMansion stands on a quiet lane in one of the Metro area's top three school districts. The school district's reputation and high college placement rate helps keep property values high.

At least fifteen percent of the houses on our lane send children to private schools instead of to the public schools. (This is before accounting for households with no children, so the actual percentage of children here who go to private school is higher.) A few days ago I learned that one of our Noble Employers, who lives a few blocks away in the same district, is moving his child from public to private school next year. Another of the Noble Employers said that he's moving into our district from one recognized to be inferior, but will continue to send his children to private school.

In many other cities, parents send their children to private schools because the public schools are objectively bad. I recall reading something in the Big O a few months ago to the effect that in the Portland area, the better the public school, the more likely parents are to send their children to private schools instead. One reason is economic: the better public schools are in more expensive areas, and parents living there are better able to afford private school.

Something's wrong when we move our families to the best school districts in order not to send our children to those schools.

The Burnside walk

Here and there I pick up the idea that the city planners want West Burnside to be more friendly to pedestrians. (This is related to the idea of converting Burnside and Couch into a one-way couplet.)

While walking past the Temple of Books I figured out why Burnside isn't friendly to pedestrians. (This idea maybe old news to traffic planners, and if so, please bear with me.) It's because Burnside has no on-street parking.

"Huh? What does parking have to do with pedestrians?"

The parked cars are a 7-foot-wide buffer between pedestrians and passing cars. The parked cars make the sidewalk safe. An unsafe sidewalk doesn't attract walkers. Compare walking along West Burnside between 10th and 11th with walking along NW Broadway (also a two-way street). Broadway has parking; Burnside doesn't.

So (if anyone at the City is reading this) here's another reason to keep or restore on-street parking.

The mailbox is a lousy town hall

Tonight PBS shows the first episode of Colonial House, a documentary about people who agree to live for several months on the coast of Maine in the manner of 1628, but with cameras present. (Bob's Red Mill, of Milwaukie, was the lead corporate sponsor and provided the flour and grains.) The colonists follow an adaptation of 17th century colonial rules, including mandatory Sunday church attendance.

Saturday I previewed the first four episodes. In one of them, one family skips church on Sunday to go skinny-dipping. The next week other colonists skip church. The minister says that the Sunday church meeting is an important part of holding the community together, not so much for the religious purpose but because the community physically gets together only for church.

Tomorrow is Election Day. It's certainly more efficient for us to vote by mail, and voting by mail means that candidates can't effectively use Election Eve smear tactics. But I miss going to the polls because it was an act of community, and nothing's come along to replace it.

Something nice about American suburbs

America is still the land of opportunity, for restaurant owners as well as diners. In what other nation could I go to dinner (as I did last week) at a sushi bar operated by immigrants from Korea and Latin America, sandwiched between a pizza parlor and a Chinese restaurant?

One percent for art

I used to scoff at the "one percent for art" rule, which requires most government building projects to spend 1% of their construction budget on art. I'm still not thrilled with it, particularly when I look at some of the "art" that has been purchased with the allocation, but I've been less dogmatically opposed to the program since it occurred to me that the same basic idea funded Michelangelo's painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Who finesses next?

In bridge, to take a finesse means to attempt to win a trick with a certain card when a higher-ranking card is still in the hands of the opponents. Until his disgrace last week, Neil Goldschmidt was the highest-ranking "card" in the intersection of Oregon business and politics. A number of people ranked distantly behind Uncle Neil, none in clear possession of second place, however.

With Uncle Neil out of the picture for at least several years, and maybe for life, the influence field is now wide open. Who's going to take his place?

Three years of law school down the drain

That's what a "Form B" resignation means for Uncle Neil.

The bathtub on Fifth Avenue

As I paid a visit to the Temple of Commerce (otherwise known as Pioneer Place) I recalled what used to stand on those blocks. The northeast corner of 5th and Yamhill held the Goodnaugh Building, which in the 1960s had a restaurant called "Danny's" on the ground floor. Connected to Danny's was the Harvester Bar. The operator had a certain sense of humor and installed a bathtub outside the Fifth Avenue door in the planter box, across from the Pioneer Post Office. As far as I know, no one bathed in it, and I don't know if he meant the empty bathtub as a sardonic comment on the statue in front of the Georgia-Pacific Building two blocks up the street.

Things really did look different in Oregon, before the state adopted "Things look different here" as its slogan.

Inside the Temple, of course, things looked pretty much the same as they look in the rest of the country, and no one appeared to be dreaming.

Now that Oregon is where "We love dreamers," maybe Pioneer Place will display a bed where the bathtub used to be.